The Gathering

Day 1 - Saturday

Right, we're here for 2 days of the biggest clan Gathering for over 200 years.... what will we see first??

It's held at Holyrood Park, just behind Holyrood Palace.
There were: heavy weight Highland games, highland dancing, pipe bands aplenty, historical displays, lots of Scottish food (including haggis pasties and yummy lemon tarts). Lots to keep people busy.

Right - the Clan tents. Robertson comes under the Donnachaidh (donn-a-key) clan, so there first. We met the Clan Chief and shook his hand.

My mum was a Wyllie, which is part of the Gunn Clan.

My sister-in-law Helen is a Cameron, so a quick greeting there.

The organisers were expecting 40,000 people to come from all over the world. The weather on the Saturday was fantastic... and nearly 50,000 people turned up. We had bought Silver passports, so were able to just walk in, while there were long queues for the day tickets.

Arthur's Seat was the spectacular backdrop. On Saturday, you could see people like ants scurrying up and down the hills. We went only a short way up to take the photos above.

The people one sees - Prince Charles and Camilla - coming out of the back of Holyrood Palace. Charles officially opened the Gathering.

Interesting bands - this one wearing the old-style tartan, playing drums and bagpipes.

There were plenty of the traditional pipe bands as well.

The highlight was the clan parade up the Royal Mile from Holyrood Palace to Edinburgh Castle. This was the biggest parade of tartan in over 200 years. Though most of the participants were not Scottish, they were all of Scottish descent. Apparently there are 37,000,000 people in the world claiming Scottish descent, but only 5.5M living in Scotland. There was a long wait, as Robertson was towards the end of the alphabet. We talked with the Ross & Stewart Clans. I had my photo taken with two pipers who were practising.

Col was thrilled to hold the Robertson placard and lead the clan. Most of the group were Aussies - there were a few Scots wearing the Robertson hunting tartan (green/blue)

What felt amazing was that there was a crowd of onlookers, all up the Royal Mile. The parade itself took over 2 hours, but people were waiting so they could cheer on their Clan. We felt like film stars on the red carpet (no autographs).

The parade finished at Edinburgh Castle and only silver passport holders could attend the pageant. We weren't allowed to take photos of the pageant itself - Aisling's Children. It was about the changes in Scotland over the centuries and how many people left Scotland for other countries. The pageant was written especially for The Gathering.

Day 2 - Sunday

The weather was not so good on the Sunday - forecast rain most of the day. So we set off in our weatherproofs (it was about a 2 mile walk from our Edinburgh apartment to Holyrood Park)

On Saturday afternoon, we had seen the last few minutes of a performance by The Red Hot Chilli Pipers. We had heard their music in many of the Princes Street and Royal Mile souvenir shops... who was this band playing Queen and John Farnham on the bagpipes??? Apparently they won a British 'Who wants to be famous?' TV show in 2007.

The Red Hot Chilli Pipers were fantastic. They call what they do 'bag rock'... bagpipe rock'n'roll.

http://www.redhotchillipipers.co.uk/ They were playing again on Sunday at 11am.

They even had the Red Hot Chilli Pipers dancers, who merged traditional Highland dancing with contemporary dancing.

Col bought a CD and 2 DVDs!

The Gathering finished on Sunday at 6pm, with a final pipe band. Most people had left, so we got good seats on the stands, without people standing in the way.